Sandy tests the food supply

In the days and hours leading up to superstorm Sandy, residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut found most of the bottled water and nonperishables they were seeking on supermarket shelves, the result of a supply chain that becomes better at gauging demand as each natural disaster provides additional data.

In the immediate aftermath, restaurants and supermarkets faced shortages as closed roads, bridges and tunnels disrupted the supply chain. Stores running on backup generators amid power outages had huge stocks of meat, dairy and other perishable products that couldn’t be sold. Still, the situation wasn’t as dire and long lived as it might have been years ago, before the days of data-driven supply-chain systems, according to Wired.